Posted on 03/06/2019 6:25:00 AM PST by centurion316
The Trump re-election campaigns wireless open access proposal was a poorly vetted scheme possibly intended to score political points. It was squelched almost immediately after it became public, as shocked White House staff members complained that it contradicted the administrations support for competing wireless networks. The twist? Open access wireless is actually a terrific idea. Some forward-thinking Democrats and public interest advocates have been pushing it for decades.
The concept, promoted by Republican operatives such as Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, is for a network supporting fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology to operate on a wholesale basis. Carriers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon could buy capacity. So could anyone else: Apple, Amazon, Walmart, Uber or small operators serving rural areas. No company could use exclusive control over spectrum to block competition.
Last year, a leaked National Security Council presentation called for nationalization of 5G networks to improve cybersecurity and better compete against China. The proposal was ignominiously killed and its author left the White House. The Trump re-election campaigns proposal wisely dropped the government takeover. It shifted the focus to wholesale access, which could be overseen by an independent nonprofit organization, like the independent system operators that manage electricity markets.
Todays cellphones use fourth-generation wireless technology, or 4G. 5G, a set of standards under development, promises higher speeds, improved coverage and better support for new technologies such as augmented reality, autonomous vehicles and connected sensors in all types of devices. 5G networks require denser construction of towers, reducing the distance between a tower and each device. To make 5G a reality, companies and consumers around the world will have to invest hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade to upgrade hardware, phones and networks. The countries leading the way could reap huge economic benefits.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I’m not sure why the author thinks that Progressives ought to jump on board, but it is something that needs to happen.
...
Because they are supposed to hate everything that Trump does?
Always always always be suspicious of anything the NYT recommends. The argument appears sound, but remember, it’s been written by someone with only a journalism degree (most probably). To them, the wiring of a flashlight is grad level engineering.
The National Security folks will use 5G to improve their information gathering on Americans—regardless of what they say in public.
It is little wonder the Mockingbird media love it....
(out here in a rural area where cell phones fear to tread... ;-) )
At the introduction to the article, the author is identified as a Professor at the Wharton School, one of the nation’s leading business institution.
Yup. The Progressives would do this, but would nationalize the system, make access FREE, and ban Conservatives from using it, all at the same time.
No, that’s what the Chinese will do if we don’t do something.
So everybody will be bathed 24/7 in the same concentrated electromagnetic waves that cause glioblastoma brain cancer.
What a great idea.
This is not a conservative position, but it’s the correct position. The private sector is not going to finance this. They don’t need to, they are making enough money as it is and the investment would be too great for any one of them alone.
WHY? is this “NECESSARY”??
Or is this the result of the arrogant technologists propaganda that convinces the political class to convince the sheeple that we “NEED” their stuff.
For you, a party line and a 14K baud modem should suffice.
Since most folks today have no concept of a Baud rate, 300 Baud is about 10 characters per second.
Nobody should embrace this!
Something else that Kushner (this time apparently at the behest of Thiel) has apparently convinced Trump to go in the wrong direction on...
Nationalizing by force from Washington a short range technology that does not meaningfully bother interstate commerce is unconstitutional and a bad idea.
And frequencies might “belong” to the feds (short low power ones should not) but there is a lot more to “5G” than the particular frequencies they use, which is all that the feds “control.”
States like Texas and California in particular are nation-equivalents.
Why should 29 million Texans share control of their communications with everyone else, when on its face it is not an enumerated power of these USA?
States will automatically cooperate with each other just like nations do. Canada and these USA are not incompatible. If we do not boss Canada and Mexico around, why should Virginia boss California around?
And the Verizons and ATTs who will promote cooperation in 5G may not like it, but they have to and ought to follow state laws everywhere, not run roughshod over them like out of control fed agents.
Anything nationalized tends to be just one more excuse to TAX and CONTROL something by centralized masters. It creates another one stop shopping choice for fascist dictators every time we cede another issue.
They even have altered the playing field to where you, a conservative, are advocating just what they want, partly because you fear they will get what they want first!
This is the approach rinos (not you) take, except they usually wait until AFTER the democrats stick us with crap before they jump on board, eg Medicare (and don’t get me started on the laundry list of similar nationalized travesties). “We’ll do a better job at it than the democrats.” “It’s not fascism when we do it.”
We the people (the states) can and should control a siazable amount of our own self-defense.
We the people can (our states) and should control can and should control our own electricity grids, roads, public health.
We the people in our states can and should be the equivalent of nations cooperating together in this land.
And states can and should each control their own communications infrastructures as much as possible, cooperating fruitfully with each other of course, but not ceding their power to an out of control unconstitutional centralized deep-state monster.
Methods for insuring excellent connectivity state to state can be developed, just like highways and bridges cross from state to state, and border cities on state lines seem unified. Strong nation-states are is much more resiliant to destruction and to centralized control. Let’s advocate for a strong state militia of 5G technology, not only control by the deep state of Washington.
Let’s not give up our freedom to get a fix of mobile Netflix anesthesia while they sneak the handcuffs on us.
“For you, a party line and a 14K baud modem should suffice.”
No it wouldn’t. But the non-centralized ad hoc way we got from that point to 3G & then some 4G is fine. We did not need a “national program” to do that, and we don’t need one now for 5G.
The 5G developers do not get a license for government demands that everyone go out and start investing in 5G, because we “need” it. “Desirable” is never “need” and often not even “necessary”.
The free enterprise way of “new developments” is there is always a first wave, which is expensive, not well adopted, and most don’t have nor want nor need to adopt. COMPETITION then enters that development wave, pushes the price/cost down, gets some more buyers, and adoption spreads.
5G does not need a government push. Conservatives don’t need to join Democrats to “lead” what industry will do, when, where and how it is financially reasonable to do.
Yes, some things will always be more expensive in rural areas. And a lot of folks in rural areas could care less that you can have cheap streaming video and the can’t. Eventually the technology wave will lower the cost of how 5G can get delivered and innovators will figure out how to do that; and rural folks will get 5G and many other things. Meanwhile they can and will survive and prosper. They all don’t need nor want to “try to keep up with the Joneses.”
Well, it IS the New York Times, so I guess I'm not terribly surprised at the dig, but I did stop reading right there.
Rural Broadband internet access is a huge economic development issue. The telcoa failure to build any of their promised networks in rural areas is holding large swathes of the country back.
After all, the government didn’t build the interstate highways, or create the hydro-power dams that won WW2, or invent nuclear fission and create the nuclear power sector, or wire rural America for electricity. We should leave it to monopolists in the private sector to do these things, and if they don’t, well that’s OK, China has our best interests at heart, so if they take over the world that will be fine, too.
“Rural Broadband internet access is a huge economic development issue. The telcoa failure to build any of their promised networks in rural areas is holding large swathes of the country back.”
Holding them back from what? From buying more what the technologists DEMAND everyone “needs”. Holding them back from what? From being more like New York City dwellers? Who says they WANT to be like New York City dwellers??
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